From the Entrepreneur’s Corner (25): Do You Know How to Soft Pitch Someone?
You’re at pre-seed or seed, soft pitching and already getting Nos. Don’t get discouraged; move on, generate more leads and meet new people. Soft pitch to everyone you believe will help you; you never know where the right contact or referral appears. Don’t spend too much time with those who just want to learn or drag their leg when about investing. Till you close, always keep looking for new, warner leads; warning up the cold ones it’s not a solution. The mindset should be: the world is filled with numerous potential investors. You only need to find them, or at least a good one; and be sure it’s the right one, as you don’t want inside your company a jackass who’ll start asking for weekly reports, cash flow analyses and being bossy when they have a 5% stake only, or the 5% clubbers (I’m not the greatest fan of the low digits diversity club deals, when your business if still nascent.)
When soft pitching (everyone!), you may use the Cialdini’s approach: ask for the moon. If you find the one(s) to fulfill it, great; if not, some people may feel uncomfortable, so you can go for a smaller ask — like a referral (ask for the best referral, not a list of useless contacts.)
Don’t be shy and approach the potential female investors as well. Some believe women are much more conservative with their investments; you’ll be surprised: they might be even better at analyzing your business, being supportive when in need, or going tough. Additionally, keep in mind that there is no correlation between wealth or gender and check size.
You might believe that soft pitching goes only against the wealthy ones and the specialized funds. I know numerous cases where other entrepreneurs, like yourself, who are not or don’t seem to act like angels can become angel investors for you. Therefore, take as many meetings as you can and maintain discipline on the contacts and status of discussions.
The founder has to constantly improve her/his ability to manage perception. The way (s)he presents her-/himself, manages the time, or demonstrates passion — all matter. You don’t what to show your fear when you’re stepping into the room. Passion means treating what you do like play, solving problems that you care about even if not paid, putting extra hours in the accomplishment of a task if needed, or doing everything you can to help others. In order to be passionate you have to be confident about yourself. How you communicate with yourself is therefore important. Our self-belief and confidence come from the way we communicate. Strength comes from inside us, it’s a saying.
Soft pitching can be an acquired taste. However (and extending Victor Cheng’s ”scaffolding,”) when one coaches a highly-talented startup exec a new soft skill but she/him still performs poorly in pitches or when networking with the team, consider the possibility that the problem isn’t in her/his innate talent but perhaps in how the coach scaffolded (or didn’t) the progression of concepts and sub-skills.
Fundraising is hard and even impossible when the founders lack the soft skills, but don’t give up! Only the winner takes it all.
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